Elizabeth Pastor Presents!

Humantific CoFounder Elizabeth Pastor gave an informal Humantific talk today at Google here in New York City.

Lots of interest in the NextDesign Geographies Framework… Design 1,2,3,4.

Lots of interest in Upstream and Downstream methods.

Lots of interest in learning more about how to bring understanding of cognitive/thinking styles into cross-disciplinary team consciousness.

If you would like Elizabeth to come and give an inspirational Humantific talk to your in-house group on topics such as SenseMaking for ChangeMaking, Building Inclusive Innovation Culture,Upstream Challenge Framing, or Rethinking Design Thinking, feel free to send us an email: kickitup (at) humantific (dot) com.

If you are an organizational leader and would like to join our Friends of Humantific LinkedIn Group feel free to send us an email. 🙂

Getting the Conversation Started

Hello again Humantific readers. This week we are returning to our Secrets of Innovation Series by sharing an overview of the Ambidexterity Continuum and how we use it conversationally. It’s a simple device that can be powerful in initial conversations.

As many of our readers will know: we often work with organizational leaders who are encountering complex marketplace dynamics that lead them in one way or another to find their way into the subject of what today is often called Operational Dexterity, Ambidexterity or Dual Engine strategy. We find that most often leaders arrive into the subject through the complex challenges they are encountering rather then via academic literature or theories.

Some of our readers will know that Harvard Business Review and The IBM Institute for Business Value, among others have, in recent years, published articles on the subject of ambidexterity in organizations attempting to make some of the more academically inclined research/literature a little more user friendly to business audiences.

“One of the most important lessons is that ambidextrous organizations need ambidextrous senior teams and managers—executives who have the ability to understand and be sensitive to the needs of very different kinds of businesses.” Charles O’Reilly & Michael Tushman, The Ambidextrous Organization.

More recently it has been interesting to see several global management consultancies including Accenture, Deloitte and Bain & Company also arrive into the subject publishing point-of-view papers suggesting firms of the future will have underlying ambidextrous operating strategies.

“We’re beginning to see what the next generation of successful companies will look like….The firm of the future will manage two types of businesses—“Engine 1” of its core and “Engine 2” of its more innovative businesses.” Bain & Company 2017.

…..As a next generation of leaders arrive we are seeing significant interest in ambidexterity as it relates to inclusive culture building.

Ultimately leaders come to the realization that ambidexterity is not an abstraction but rather is representational cognitively of collective and inclusive us. For diverse organizations ambidexterity is home.

Good News Readers!

Long overdue and years in the making, Humantific’s Innovation Methods Mapping : De-Mystifying 80+ Years of Innovation Process Design is in final review and will be published this month. It will be available on Amazon soon. Operating a busy innovation consultancy, while doing research and writing books is not a formula for speedy book making! We are delighted to have the first volume in this series finally heading out the door.

This book is designed to fill what Humantific perceives to be a void in the field of innovation process knowledge and literature. It has been created and is being shared for educational purposes. Its intention is to present a cross section of 50+ innovation process examples spanning an 80+ year time period. The focus of this study is to better understand innovation methods across the timeline of history in terms of knowledge evolution, design, and architectural construction, versus judging the effectiveness of various methods.

Innovation Methods Mapping introduces a new kind of method analysis framework designed to enhance understanding of historical and current process models as well as inform future process design.

INTENDED AUDIENCES

This book is intended for advanced readers on the subject of innovation related process knowledge. As a foundation for understanding, we assume readers already have a high level of knowledge, so this book is not going to be suitable for everyone.

Humantific works with organizational leaders in numerous industries to build team-based innovation capacity so we were naturally interested to see this article appear recently in BloomBerg BusinessWeek directed at its MBA audience.

“We surveyed recruiters in two dozen industries, from consulting to consumer products, so while we asked specifically about their preferences in MBA recruiting, their feedback likely applies to a wide pool of applicants for the same types of jobs.”

Data from this survey showed that Strategic Thinking*, Creative Problem-Solving* and Leadereship Skills* are not only in high demand but are also “the hardest to find”!

In the context of organizations this 10 skills list translates into need for investment in innovation capacity building, in innovation skills, in a new generation of adaptability skills.

Many organizations are already hard at work on building such innovation capacity. Today a new generation of adaptablity skills have taken shape in this “big data era” where making sense of complexity is now often key.

We were delighted to see the sythesized 2020 Workplace Engagement Model inside this useful book by Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd entitled The 2020 Workplace / How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today.

We would recomend this book to our Humantific readers, many of whom are organizational leaders working on building next generation innovation capacity.

Anything related to envisioning tomorrow is useful in the context of imagining future organizational change and many organizations digest large quantities of such insights as part of their everyday sensemaking, some more formally than others.

We consistently see Collaboration, Authenticity and Innovation playing important roles in many future workplace visions.

Many organizational leaders are not waiting around for all the confirming statistics to be in, but rather are actively working on building this 2020 capacity NOW!

If you would like to send us a comment, or be placed on the pre-order list for the print version of the book please feel free to leave a comment below and or email: methodsmapping (at) openinnovationconsortium (dot) org

OVERVIEW
This workbook presents a new kind of methods analysis framework applied to 50 innovation process models spanning a period of 80+ years. Embedded in the framework is a new form of innovation process literacy, designed to enhance understanding of historical and current process models, as well as inform future process design.

PROJECT PURPOSE
This study has been created and shared for educational purposes.

This book is designed to fill what the consortium perceives to be a void in the field of innovation process knowledge.

As an OPEN Innovation Consortium initiative, the goal of this book project is to help move the art, science and design of innovation process modeling forward into the 21st century.

Two + years in the making, Humantific, in concert with OPEN Innovation Consortium will soon publish a new book: Innovation Methods Mapping / DeMystifying 80 Years of Innovation Process Design.

OVERVIEW

This workbook presents a new kind of methods analysis framework applied to 50 innovation process models spanning a period of 80+ years. Embedded in the framework is a new form of innovation process literacy, designed to enhance understanding of historical and current process models, as well as inform future process design.

PROJECT PURPOSE

This study has been created and shared for educational purposes.

This book is designed to fill what the consortium perceives to be a void in the field of innovation process knowledge.

As an OPEN Innovation Consortium initiative, the goal of this book project is to help move the art, science and design of innovation process modeling forward into the 21st century.

ABOUT OPEN INNOVATION CONSORTIUM

Open Innovation Consortium was founded in 2009 by a diverse group of seasoned co-creation professionals from numerous organizations operating in several countries. Our mission is to advocate, contribute to and inspire the ongoing evolution of innovation process design and innovation related tool-making in a continuously changing world.

PREVIEW EDITION BUZZ

”A masterful piece of work.”

Dr. SID PARNES & BEA PARNES
APPLIED CREATIVITY PIONEERS

“It seems every new decade sweeps in a new wave of design methods, the latest wave bringing design frameworks of scale and social complexity. The Innovation Methods Mapping is perhaps the first organized effort to demonstrate the relationships and patterns over the historical timeline. The work reveals the underlying inspirations connecting early creative processes to systems thinking to service and organizational design. The Mapping glues these together with a consistent design language that expresses the fundamental patterns in elegant simplicity. This design language enables the reader to select the right methods for complex situations or to develop consistent applications across methods. Few other resources – if any – give designers such an expressive capacity and understanding across methods.”

PETER JONES, PH.D.
FOUNDER,
REDESIGN

“This book opens up and incredibly clear and useful framework for exploring a fascinating world systematically. It helps you make sense of a rich treasure of creative work. Methods Mapping revealed for us new patterns that helped us connect our ways of working with similar methods and inspired us to venture in creating new ones. More than mapping, it is also a recombining machine for your own creativity processes.”

RAMON SANGÜESA, PH.D.
PARTNER,
COCREATING CULTURES

“This book serves one important purpose – it provides documented evidence that design thinking and innovation process can be framed and facilitated in multiple ways. At the same time the book is structured to help readers consider a great variety of frameworks through a template for comparison. The book will serve as an important reference resource for those involved in educating clients of design and innovation at the fuzzy front end.”

UDAY DANDAVATE
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO,
SONICRIM

“Innovation Methods Mapping provides a long-overdue guide to the diversity of methods and methodologies developed spanning more than 80 years in the related but often disjointed fields of creative problem solving and design. The collation of 50 distinct innovative thinking methods is reason enough to read this book. However, the unique contribution of this study is the multi-perspective analytical framework that enables comparative analysis of innovation methods. Itself an embodiment of the principles of information design, the analytical framework displays a rich ten-dimensional visualization of each method, enabling the reader to rapidly make sense of the purpose, scope, strengths, and limitations of each method. This allows the reader to move beyond the superficial similarities and differences in the way different innovation methods are visually depicted, to appreciate more fundamental differences in values, roles, weight of effort, and embedded assumptions. The subsequent analysis yields important insights for both the practical application of innovation methods as well as the future of design thinking and innovation.”

“This well documented and insightful collection of innovation processes fills a gap in the body of knowledge around the innovation discipline. It is a homage to all those involved in having shaped this practice, but also as a tool to enlighten many future practitioners. Knowing where we come from allows us to understand where we should be heading towards.”

LUIS ARNAL
MANAGING PARTNER,
INSITUM

“What a fantastic and successful effort in bringing together the many-fold strands that form our understanding of innovation today…A must-have for anyone who wants to make sense of the dispersed, disparate, and ever-growing landscape of innovation ”

“Innovation Methods Mapping is a valuable companion for the creative, design or process expert as well as the prospective client or stakeholder community for innovation methods. This beautifully designed, easy-to-read book demonstrates both the common core of activities that are essential to any innovation or design process, as well as the great diversity of methods available to practitioners. Most importantly, the authors recognize that there is simply no “one size fits all” silver bullet, enabling the reader to consider which methods are most appropriate for their specific needs and context. A welcome addition to the innovator’s bookshelf, and also an important first step in rethinking design and innovation themselves for our hyper complex, 21st century global challenges.”

DR. ROBIN WOOD
PRESIDENT,
THE RENAISSANCE2 FOUNDATION

WHY THIS STUDY IS DIFFERENT:

Includes original process drawings rather than redrawn depictions.

Includes 10 part analysis framework to help others look at process models in new ways.

Analysis framework is based in real world practice experience not academic theories.

We enjoyed reading the most recent issue of Architectmagazine (“The Magazine of the American Institute of Architects”) entitled What’s Next?: Architecture in an age of Transformation.We recognized that many of the challenges raised in the feature article have existed in the architecture industry for many years. Since this edition of Architectmagazine strives to be about organizational and industry “transformation”, we wanted to point out that there might be some process confusion embedded in “What’s Next”.

Recognizing that “What’s Next” is full of good intentions, lets not get what the magazine is successfully doing confused with the questions it raises. From a transformation methods perspective we would like to point out that the challenge of: How might a provocative magazine issue be created ? is quite different from: How might you reinvent your practice ? and How might you reinvent your industry ?. The well-meaning contributors appear to know more about the former and less about the later.

While the methodology of provocations is a useful approach to magazine article making, it is not robust enough, precise enough or scalable enough for use in addressing the latter transformation challenges. In other words, provocation is the right tool for creating entertaining magazines and the wrong method for organizational transformation. Transforming organizations and industries requires a different set of cocreation methods and skills.

Popular in academic circles, the provocations approach intermixes facts, challenges and possible solutions. In the “What’s Next” edition one can see them intertwined throughout.

While there has been no consensus (outside the magazines advisory team) on what the facts are or what the challenges are in the architecture industry, a partial picture is never-the-less created. Even with the best of intentions, the picture represented by the five central provocations in the “What’s Next” edition may or may not reflect what the key challenge areas actually are in practice and in industry.

While we were struck by the numerous insightful provocations in Bruce Mau’s “You Can Do Better” contribution to the edition it would be safe to say that the days are gone when simply complaining about complaining is enough to drive meaningful change. In the context of organizational transformation the act of “provoking” is recognized as the relatively easy lift.

Provocations tend to generate heat rather than clarity. The provocations approach typically yields more provocations, a lot of coffee chat conversations and not much forward change motion. If driving to coffee chat is your goal then provocation might be a methodology worth considering.

In the online feedback over at Architectmagazines web site, one can see what happens when the wrong problems have been defined, solutions to problems that don’t exist proposed and little buy-in has occurred.

Since transformation is the subject of the edition the overall picture being created by using provocations as an approach tends to reinforce the misperception that getting to the future in organizational contexts is argument and provocation based. It seems likely that readers come away with the misperception that this is what organizational and or industry transformation looks like and feels like. In our experience transformation need not look and feel like a magazine hit-job.

The reality is organizational transformation is messy and often complex. It is quite common that the challenges present even in small organizations vastly supersede five problem areas. To undertake this kind of work one has to get ready for navigating upstream from the terrain of tidy framed briefs where many fuzzy complex challenges exist in parallel.

Perhaps ironically this is the operational terrain that Mr. Mau seemed to be referring to in his “You Can Do Better” commentary to the “What’s Next” readers: get prepared for a place where architects are willing and able to engage, not in building creation challenges alone, but rather in addressing challenges requiring no preconceived outcomes. Mr. Mau insightfully invites readers to rethink the DNA of architecture skill not the DNA of building creation. Unfortunately what is missing from “What’s Next” is the acknowledgement that getting to that terrain and operating there clearly involves more transformation skills than provocation.

While there is nothing particularly new in Mr. Mau’s message of reorientation and reskilling, the difficult and probably more meaningful truth is that much of the graduate architecture education community including high profile institutions like Harvard Graduate Design School have for more than ten years consistently missed the globalization driven message to prepare their students for working upstream from briefs. Many graduate design schools have been tone deaf to the need for this form of strategic change. In other disciplines that message was heard years ago loud and clear. As a result when it comes to leading cross-disciplinary cocreation upstream from briefs the realm of architecture is now playing catch-up. Today, much of the most current upstream cross-disciplinary cocreation knowledge exists outside of the architecture profession.

Perhaps unintentionally the “What’s Next” magazine edition brings one unasked and unanswered key question into clear view, and that is: How will the professional association of AIA provide relevant value to its members going forward in this time of great change? If we can acknowledge that the days are already gone when it is enough for a professional association to sponsor a magazine provoking “dialogue” as its contribution to industry transformation, what then is AIA’s plan for helping its membership make sense of and navigate the realities of what’s next?

With the spirit of constructing change making in mind we would like to table a capabilities challenge to American Institute of Architects as an association. Beyond provocative conversation stimulation you might want to consider creating a change making institute capacity inside AIA that in some form is capable of offering meaningful transformation help to its membership. If there is serious appetite for such an ecosystem Humantific would be happy to help AIA create such an initiative.

Perhaps this time next year will bring more to AIA membership than yet another “What’s Next” provocation.